Getting food instead of watching the Crit just made good sense

Not quite the turnout I expected for critical mass - I'm pretty sure we had more people last month. I mean, we still had many dozens of people, including one tall bike, and Dean Zimmerman was out pressing the flesh for his reelection campaign. I suspect the weather was a factor - the weather ended up being fine, but it was overcast and I suspect some people were thinking it might rain and stayed home.

The Mass didn't spend much time downtown, instead heading down Nicollet all the way to 28th St, then over to (I think) Bloomington north, before heading to the U via Washington.

I planned to ride for the first half of Mass, then leave the group and bike over to the Fairgrounds to watch a crit that was going on there. I figured I'd ride the Cervelo, since this would be too long of a trip for the snake scooter, and I've noticed some noise coming from the bottom bracket on my mtn bike recently. The Powercranks on the Cervelo always attract attention, which can be a curse and a blessing. A curse because I don't necessarily like the attention, but also a blessing because it does spark conversations with people I might not otherwise get to talk with. So it was tonight.

For some reason the Mass did a big U-turn on campus, at which point headed off, riding the dedicated "bus transitway" from the U to the fairgrounds which worked out pretty well. Only encountered one bus along the way - no problem. Got to the Fairgrounds and (I think) the Women's Cat 3 race was in progress. Watched a few laps before realizing that I was *starving*, then also realized I had to get up early for my last 20 mile run. Not eating the night before a 20 miler seemed like a really bad idea, so I didn't stick around long - headed back to Mpls to fuel up on a burrito, and turned in relatively early.

Shuttin' down Chuck E Cheese

My friend Jon (who's joined me on critical mass a few times) had a birthday on Thursday. His girlfriend arranged a surprise party at Chuck E Cheese, so about 10 of us showed up in advance. When the surprise was sprung, the look on Jon's face was not so much one of excitement, but rather confusion. Priceless.

I didn't get Jon a gift - I figured that the simple act of showing up at a party in a place that is crawling with small children (and therefore official qualifies as Hell in my book) was gift enough.

The video games at Chucky Cheese pretty much suck. They really suck. I was hoping for at least a vintage game or two (like Dig Dug, or Ms Pacman or Centipede) but no such luck. They did have skeeball though, which made up for it a bit I suppose.

On the second floor, there's a jungle gym/maze suspended from the ceiling, constructed of plastic modules bolted together that little kids can crawl through. Rupa wanted to check it out, so she and I decided to explore it. We made it up through a few of the modules before Rupa decided she was feeling claustrophobic and needed to get down. We had taken our shoes off before entering, and my shoes didn't even fit in the little shoe rack they had - this should have been a sign that we might have problems - this thing was clearly not built for adults, even relative small adults like Rupa and I.

Matt and Wipa brought their baby - it's in the 95% percentile for both height and weight - chubby little sucka. I didn't have to feign too much interest in the child since they're were enough other people there fawning over it.

Despite the lack of quality video games (and pizza that really wasn't that great) we ended up shutting down the joint - they were vacuuming and putting chairs up by the time we finally left.

Flaming Feet

Woke up to rain Saturday morning, which pretty much blew my plans for getting my long run out of the way in the morning. It stopped raining by mid-morning, but by that time I had started in on some other projects around the house. Did a whole slew of errands around my neighborhood. I love living in Uptown because I did all this stuff in one trip, on foot:

• mailed application to get my passport renewed
  
• shipped a package by UPS
  
• made some copies at Kinkos
  
• stopped at used CD store (didn't buy anything, although I need to pick up the new M. Doughty release one of these days ...)
  
• stopped at Library - checked out the Ani Difranco/Utah Phillips disc "the past didn't go anywhere". This disc is almost 10 yrs old, but somehow I'd never heard it until now.
  
• sold two books to Magers and Quinn used bookstore
  
• stopped at Lunds grocery for root beer
  

So by the time I finished all this, it was 3PM. Decided I'd better go for that run, if I planned on getting a long one in this weekend. Ended up running the ~20 mile Wirth loop that I normally bike. The last few miles were a death march - literally run a few blocks, walk a block. Probably didn't help that I only had 2 gu packs and 16oz of gatorade for fuel. Oh well.

Got home, showered, got a huge case of the chills/shakes when I got out of the shower. Unusual. Threw on nice warms sweatpants/sweatshirt, felt a little better. Ate dinner, started to feel like crap. Stomach felt all wrong. The last time I felt like this was after running Twin Cities marathon back in 2001. My stomach felt all wrong after that race, and even the post-race pizza didn't help.

Decided I was just going to stay in for the night, but didn't know what to do w/myself. Decided to work on a little art project that I'd thought of a few days earlier. I wanted to paint flames on the side of my roadie shoes. I had the paint from a previous project. Pulled up some photos of street rods online to get an idea of how to draw flames. Cut down some raised lettering from the side of the shoes w/my utility knife. Drew up some flames, and made a quick stencil. And a few coats of paint later, the obvious was made true to me ... I need something better to do with my time!